under this stainless arch of azure sky
by egelantier
Summary: When Iselle and Cazaril board Chalion's first war frigate for its maiden voyage, they don't expect the mortal danger the two of them will soon find themselves in.


_Espero_, the first ever Chalion war frigate, took two years to build in the newly reclaimed harbor of Visping, and looked, to Iselle's untrained eye, beautiful like a summer dream, with its riot of sails and gorgeous curves of its sides. A dream paid for with years in blood, sweat and effort: aside from lost soldiers, the campaign almost cost her Bergon. Even after they had retaken Gotorget, the Roknari fought like madmen to not let Chalion reach the sea.

They failed. When Iselle had been crowned, one of the promises she had made to herself and to the Gods was that during her reign Chalion will never be locked away from the sea again. And now, _Espero_ was the first. Other ships were being built in the docks of Visping, a slowly growing forest of masts promising freedom. Sometimes she felt fiercely maternal towards those unborn ships in the same way she did for little Aurea, whom she had left in Zangr with Bergon, under Betriz' and Nan dy Vrit's care.

And now, in the harbor, the divines were finishing their blessings, and _Espero_ was ready to welcome Iselle for its maiden voyage. No more than a gentle stroll just outside of the harbor and back, to see if her father-in-law's loaned captains and sailors did a good job teaching Chalion people the craft of sailing, and to bless the whole enterprise. It was important for her to be here, and she _wanted_ to be here on this gentle summer day, wanted to enjoy the perfection of it - and did, except for one detail.

By her right hand, her Chancellor was... He stood perfectly still and watched the proceedings - the gangplank prepared, the sailors standing on the deck in neat rows, waiting for her to board, the musicians striking a victory tune - with his perfect courtier equanimity, the one that made him so dangerous to her enemies within and without. Nobody watching could've said that dy Cazaril was anything but happy to be here, eager to accompany his Royiina while she enjoyed the fruits of her politics.

But he was Caz, hers and Bergon's, and she knew him, and she knew what this placidity cost him. Between their bodies, hidden by the folds of their cloak, his left hand was shaking in tiny, minute tremors. The very sight of the sea itself was probably causing him distress. In their private counsels he argued fiercely (and won, on the crudely put basis of not putting all the royal eggs into one basket) against both her and Bergon going, and then fought (and lost) against her going, but once her voyage was decided, he never expressed anything but his utter agreement and desire to follow her wherever she went. Of course he did; he was Caz.

To ask him now if he was well was to deliver an unforgivable insult to this iron control, and so instead Iselle touched his elbow and talked to him low and private, forcing him to turn away from the sight of the waves and of the ship waiting for them. "Have you heard from my lady mother, Caz?"

She winced inwardly with guilt worn smooth with years of handling. Caz probably had a closer relationship with Mother now than she did, and Iselle did not see this changing. Back in her adolescence Grandmama, Five rest her fiery soul, was more of a mother to her than wearied, grieving, distant, mad Ista. And now, while Iselle was happy for her mother's newfound purpose and happiness, the newly forged Saint Ista, eater of demons and defender of Chalion borders, were no less alien to her.

But Caz understood and respected Ista, in a way Iselle couldn't quite grasp but was grateful to him about, and took on the additional role of being a link between them with his customary grace. And now Iselle's gambit paid off: he turned to her readily, with something of that underlying tension smoothing out of his face.

"I've gotten the latest missive from Dowager Royina just as we were setting out, a week ago - it was admirably vague about the location, but I gathered that Lady Ista, with Ser dy Arbanos for support, was planning one of her, hm, more divinely inspired expeditions. Apparently, there's been a sorcerer on the rise in one of our neighbour princedoms that she feels falls within her purview."

Iselle shivered a little. "I know she's more than capable, but it still sounds so - you have to realize that the bulk of my memories of her is of her wearing her knees out in the Valenda chapel."

Caz opened his mouth, no doubt to extol her mother's virtues to her - and discovered them to be almost at the gangplank.

"Let us go, my Lord Chancellor," Iselle said, taking his (steady now) arm, and he threw her a fleeting look, equal parts embarrassment and wry, proud regard.

They went up, Iselle's ladies following them in a cloud of silks and perfume. The music swelled around them, the sailors and guards stood to attention, the Captain, resplendent in white, welcomed them at their ship, kissing Iselle's hands and kneeling to kiss her feet. She raised him up and congratulated him on the beginning of his duty, and let him conduct her and her entourage to a small brocaded dais erected on the forecastle.

The Captain took his place at the helm, and the volley of commands went lighting-fast around the ship. The drums struck, and the sailors took to their oars, taking them away from the shore. At the mouth of the harbor, the sails caught the fresh wind, unfurling over her head, transformed from hanging cloth into gigantic wings.

She heard the seagull cry overhead, rough and demanding, and laughed in answering delight, feeling for a moment that she could send her soul to soar with the bird, to see from _Espero_ to its sisters, waiting to be born, to the winding road up to Gotorget, so dearly bought, and further to Ibra, and to Chalion, the Chalion she would not allow to be chained again.

She inhaled the tang of salt and joy in the air, exhaled it again - and turned to find Caz sitting woodenly next to her, his gaze carefully fixed on the folds of the silk canopy, his pleasantly attentive expression looking as if it was fixed crooked on his face. Her heart seized with sympathy. Everything in this moment of joy was bought by Caz's sweat and blood, ten times over, and here he was, unable to enjoy it, and likely ashamed of his pain. She wished Betriz was there; with her, perhaps, Caz could ask for comfort instead of trying to hold himself so rigidly together.

In lieu of this comfort Iselle bade her Chancellor attend to her, and held his gaze, and asked for the latest news on the state of the roads of Chalion. Now that was a topic Caz could hold forth on indefinitely, awake and asleep, and while he began somehow stiffly, Iselle made sure to ask for figures, for smallest possible details, making him focus, bringing his mind back to safely stable mud and stones of Chalion. She let the image of the soaring bird with a pang of regret - but the color returning to Caz's cheeks was worth it.

* * *

About an hour into a lively discussion of the logistics of delivering stone to the far northern reaches of Chalion Iselle dismissed her coterie to walk the ship and enjoy the view; somewhere after that, Caz stopped mid-word and jerked himself back to awareness of their surroundings.

He gave her a gimlet eye. "Royina..."

She smiled at him. "Do you imply my interest in the well-being of my subjects is less than genuine, Chancellor?"

"I would imply that you're focused too much on the well-being of your one _subject_ to your detriment, Royina."

"Royal privilege," she said and reached out to take his hand. "And preference, as well."

He smiled back at her; even now, so much time later, it somehow startled her, how young he looked when he forgot his cares for a moment. (Well, the absence of the abominable beard helped as well.)

"And yet," he said, "you should perhaps enjoy the fruits of your labor as well. Allow me to accompany you? The open sea view is not to be missed, not on a beautiful day like that."

Refusal would've been an insult - and she _did_ want to see, so much. So she allowed him to raise and took his offered arm, and they went to the starboard railing.

Best intention or not, Caz still stood with his back to the sea, leaning on the railing next to her and looking very carefully at the deck at his feet. But the moment she took in the view she couldn't spare any worry for him; the sea caught and mesmerized her instantly and utterly. They traveled far enough that she couldn't see the shore in any direction: the world was blue and green and turquoise and golden in all the directions, the sea rolling in one constant sinuous movement of water and light, rocking the wooden body of the ship under her feet with surprising gentleness.

She got lost in the sight for a while: for once the sea meant not ships and trade routes and expansion and the possible end of endless wars in sight, but just this vision of immense, benevolently indifferent _expanse_ \- and Iselle herself, perfectly and safely caught in the middle of it. It didn't make the loss of life and effort spent on getting her there acceptable; but the sea turned out to be a worthy reward.

When the change came, it happened smoothly and almost innocently: a pleasant full breeze turning into the strong wind and it turned into - she startled when she realized that she was bitterly cold, the cold wind whipping the gauze of her dress all around her, tugging at the hair her ladies-in-waiting spent so much time carefully arranging this morning.

"Iselle," Caz said sharply, touching her shoulder, "I don't think this weather is _normal_."

She followed his pointing hand, looking upwards, and saw, over the straining sails, a dark wheel of storm clouds, pregnant with lighting, with their mainmast as a central spoke.

"We have to get you down into the hold," Caz said. His questing touch on her shoulder turned into a bruising hold. He was tugging her along, and his other hand went to the hilt of his sword. "This can't be a natural storm."

"My ladies," she said, resisting the drag, "we need - "

\- and the world around her went insane.

In the blink of the eye, the clouds opened, releasing torrents of water; the placidly gorgeous waters rose into foaming, night-swollen waves; the sunlight and ease of the summer day around turned into pouring darkness. She heard an angry _twang_ of a rope snapping, and in the flash of the first lighting saw several sailors struggling to hold down the madly flapping edge of a sail. Somebody screamed. The deck under her pitched sharply, and Iselle would've fallen if not for Caz's iron grip.

He had to scream into her ear for her to hear him over the horrific noise rising from all the directions. "This has to be caused by magic! We need to get you inside, Royina, now!"

She let him drag her, stumbling and swaying drunkenly from side to side - the deck, so widely solid a scant handful of moments ago, turned into a death trap full of uncoiled ropes and rolling barrels. The rain came down like a living force, battering Iselle mercilessly; she couldn't see a handspan away from her face.

Cazaril, Five bless him, kept his head and his sea legs; with him, they might have made it to the dubious safety of the hold - she thought they might have, in any case - if another strike of lightning had not hit one of the masts. The image of it burned itself in Iselle's eyes - the cold white lily of fire blooming high into the sky - and then the mast groaned and began falling, majestically and horribly slowly, mesmerizing Iselle and making her stop for one crucial, unlucky moment.

Then she heard another, deafening _twang_ of a snapping rope; an impression of immense, swift movement; and then Cazaril screaming her name. He swept her in his arms, turning her around and shielding her with her body. Something whip-fast and immense hit them both, and she felt the force of it, reverberating through her teeth and bones. She had just a moment to hear Cazaril's bitten-off, harsh sound of agony, and then there was a confused moment of flight - falling - she saw the side of the ship, sliding past her terrifyingly fast - and then the water, cold and merciless, rose and hit them both, carrying them down into churning darkness.

* * *

It was some half-forgotten remnants of those sun-drenched swimming lessons from long ago that saved them: when the water, shockingly violent, closed over Iselle's head, she managed to keep her mouth shut and not inhale any of it. Cazaril's arms were still clamped around her like a vise, but he didn't move; underwater, Iselle caught a glimpse of his pale, senseless face, with eyes wide open but empty.

She managed to kick off her shoes, grateful that they were flimsy ornamental slippers and not less fashionable leather boots that would've surely drowned her. _Up_ was only possible to track by the eerily silent flashes of lighting overhead; she swam toward them, straining for air, with a soundless and terrified prayer to the Lady running through her head. Up; up; up; the water, so welcoming and gorgeous moments ago, now held her and tossed her like one of those giant snakes from the horrifying tales one of her nannies used to scare her into obedience. And Cazaril was a dead - please, Lady, no - weight in her arms.

Just as she thought that her lungs felt about to burst, they breached the the surface. Iselle stole a heaving lungful of air, and the noise hit her next, the same cacophony of breaking wood and screams; rain slapped her eyes, filled her frantically open mouth.

"Caz," she screamed, "Caz! Cazaril!"

Even in this violent churl she could see blood in the water; and with her arms around him, she could feel, blindly, that something was _wrong_ with his right shoulder, his right side. Something on the ship had came loose and hit him, something that would've killed her, if Cazaril didn't shield her with her body.

"Caz," she said again. A wave slapped her down with insulting indifference; they went under, then desperately back up, Iselle straining to keep their heads over the water. Somewhere to the side, the ship was looming; Iselle couldn't imagine how to get back onto it, but could easily imagine the both of them smashed into its side.

Under again; the gauze and silks of her dress twined around her like wet seaweed, dragging her down. Cazaril's scabbard banged against her shins, almost breaking them; his sodden cloak was impossibly heavy, and she hadn't a spare hand to try and get rid of it.

This time, when she surfaced, Caz shuddered awake, and she could cry with relief. But his eyes weren't focusing properly, and she could feel how weakly and disjointedly his legs kicked underwater.

"Ise... lle," he gasped. "What..."

She shouted at him. "Just move! Kick your legs!"

Under again; her own legs felt leaden, sodden, useless. She felt as exhausted as during that insane dash from Valenda, back then, and they've been in the water for what - three minutes? five?

Surface; air; in desperation, she bent her head and attacked the knot of Cazaril's cloak with her teeth, swallowing salt.

The knot, full of water, held stubbornly. Cazaril struggled weakly in her grip when she came up.

"Royina... let go."

"No,' she sobbed. She could barely feel her legs anymore; she couldn't tell if they were moving. She bent again, tugging and tearing, and the waves rolled over them, heavy and indifferent. Just as she was sure this was it, the leather finally gave, releasing the cloak to slide off Cazaril's shoulder, float down into the depths.

Up, and she couldn't help the feral grin splitting her face. "No, Caz - hold on - "

But even this relief was shortlived; as if in response to her success, the waves rose even higher, the storm whipped into an angrier frenzy. Cazaril's lips were moving; he still was begging her to release him, and she was sure that if he was just a bit stronger, just a bit less wounded, he'd try to make her.

Against her will, there came a moment where she ran out of strength and time - the water was in her eyes and her mouth and her ears and her hair and her sodden dress, and the fury of the water became too much, and Cazaril's weight impossible - and they went under the surface for the last time, twined together, helpless to resist.

Caz's eyes were closed; either he didn't want to see it - her last moment, the failure of their hopes - or he lost the consciousness again. She hoped he was beyond pain.

They drifted down slowly; she stopped fighting and watched, languidly, the fading trail of air bubbles rising to the surface. It was so quiet underwater; so peaceful, and she was so tired...

_Bergon_, she thought, fading. _Aurea. Betriz. I'm sorry..._

And then, just at the edge of this peaceful surrender, the time - stopped.

She hung, motionless, no longer constrained by her aching body or straining lungs; feeling, instinctively, that in that space here, between heartbeats, her _when_ did not matter...

Light suffused the water around her, brightest white and darkest purple, filling the space around slowly and inexorably - and in the heart of this shining space a _Presence_, vastly amused, found them and cupped them in its palm.

_My sweet Ista,_ the god said into Iselle's ear, _sends her regards_.

And then the divine amusement dissolved, along with the light; but the memory of it made Iselle find some last, impossible reserve of strength. She kicked upwards, dragging Cazaril with her, and when their heads broke water for the last time, it was to calm waters and bright sunlight.

When a boat filled with frantic sailors found them, Iselle was still gasping with weak laughter. She let them haul them up - a soldier had to carefully and painfully unlock her fingers, one by one, from the folds of Cazaril's tunic - and was still laughing and coughing up water when her world went sideways, and quiet, and dark.

* * *

She woke up to the wooden planks of the ship's cabin over her, and to relieved and worried faces of her ladies-in-waiting - faces that, through no fault of their own, made her suddenly and sharply miss Betriz.

"Your Majesty! Oh, bless the Five, you're with us."

"I am," Iselle said; she began a laborious and unpleasant process of sitting up on the bed and clawing her way out of the veritable cocoon of wrappings. Last time she felt that horrible, bruised and aching and weak all over, was after Aurea's birth, and _that_ took about thirty hours.

She nodded at sharp-faced dy Belinne, her favorite (after Betriz) for an ability to cut straight to the chase. "Lord Caz? And what happened on board? Did we lose anybody?"

Dy Belinne's report filled her with mingled relief and rage: she's lost two guards who were swept overboard and were too weighed by their armor to stay afloat, a sailor was killed by a falling mast, and most of her ladies got injured, although thankfully none more seriously than poor timid dy Estelle with her broken arm. Horrendous list, in itself, but relatively benign for the attack of such magnitude.

The ship's physician and his assistant were still with Cazaril; the ladies could tell her no more than that, and that he was apparently still alive.

"Help me dress," Iselle said, dismissing the panicked refusals (apparently, a sailor saw her and Caz go overboard, and until the rescue boat picked them up, the ladies were sure she was dead, and were panicked and grief-stricken accordingly, and now dying to coddle her).

She ended up wearing dy Maragal's dress, it being the driest and least damaged out of the entire company, with poor lady getting Captain's spare uniform instead. Iselle would've perhaps preferred it to be the other way around, but if it soothed her coterie to follow _some_ dregs of protocol, so would it be.

She still had to lean on dy Belinne's arm rather heavily to go on the deck. The sky was just as innocently clear and the waves as beautifully placid as in the beginning of their voyage; she eyed them suspiciously and decided that there was something to be said about Caz's distrust of sea travel.

Iselle made a slow, painfully limping circuit around the deck - commending the Captain for keeping the ship afloat and mostly whole in the midst of the insanity of the storm, reassuring her frantic head of guard that a new attack was unlikely to come, soothing the injured and noting the names of the dead. The ship, she was informed, was damaged badly but not irreparably; it might take them a couple of days to limp back to their intended course and to the harbor, but the Captain saw no immediate danger.

(She forbade herself to think about a frantic messenger who must've been speeding off to Zangre right now, bearing news of their disappearance to Bergon and Betriz; there was nothing she could do about it, save sending the second messenger the moment they were on the dry land.)

Finally, her duty done and the sun setting down, she told dy Belinne to take her to see Cazaril, all the dutiful, frenetic energy of her last hour leaking out of her, step by step. She felt - cautious - about praying, unsure if she could risk - or stand - another moment of that overwhelming... being, without the quiet cushioning of impending death. But she still prayed, to the Lady as she always did: _preserve him, protect him, don't let him..._

The physician, exhausted, met her at the door of the cabin. She decided, muzzily, that she liked his face; he reminded her of Dedicat Rojeras, back in Zangre. He bowed to her and gave her a succinct report, hopeful and terrifying in the equal measure. Cazaril's back wasn't, as she dreaded, broken; but his shoulder and clavicle and four ribs on his right side were. He swallowed too much seawater, and gotten way too cold, and so, of course, the fever was already rising in him.

"The injuries are grievous," the physician said, "but will heal with time and care. But I don't have all the medicines I would need to treat his lungs, and his fever. And in his agitation he's aggravating the injuries, and..."

Iselle inhaled sharply. "Agitation?"

"He's, ah - not entirely himself - it's to be expected with the fever. And there's pain, of course; I gave him as much poppy juice as was safe to soothe it, but more might suppress his breathing."

"Let me in," she said and swept him out of the way when it looked like he would protest.

Inside the dimly lit cabin, Caz' twisted and turned on the bed; she almost recoiled from the anguish on his face, the bright flare of fever high on his cheeks. The physician's assistant leaned over him, trying to restrain Caz without hurting him, and each his touch, no matter how gentle, seemed to drive Cazaril further into terror.

She came to his bed as if floating through a dream; her grasp of vile Roknari was good enough to understand that Caz was, in a voice of somebody at least a decade younger and deeply terrified, was mumbling _no, no, don't, I can row, I can, don't, I'm not..._

How he would've had hated her seeing him like this! It was a vile betrayal of his dignity, and his confidence; but out of everybody on the ship, living or dead, Iselle could imagine nobody but her who had a right to witness his suffering.

She turned to the physician, steeling herself. "Aside from having to keep him still, did you do everything you could for him, Dedicat?"

The man faltered under her gaze. "There's medicine to be given - and water to keep down the fever - "

"Show me," Iselle said. "And then leave us."

"Royina?!"

She had no time and patience for that. "Chancellor dy Cazaril," she said, articulating with as much gravitas of royalty as she could muster under the circumstances, "is a cornerstone of Our reign. If We decide We'd like to oversee his care, do _you_ have any objections?"

"...No, Royina."

She closed the door behind him and thought, wearily, that somebody would need to make sure, later, that there will be no unseemly rumors. Normally that "somebody" would be Cazaril, but...

"I'm used to you performing miracles, am I not? Perhaps you should stop this habit of yours while you still can, Caz."

She took the clean rag from where the physician had left it, wrung it in cold water, and knelt by Cazaril's low cot, too tired to stay on her feet.

"Cazaril," she said, quietly, and was glad nobody but him could hear the tremble in her voice. "Caz. It's just you and me, and you need to keep still."

He rolled his head across the pillow with what looked like monumental effort; his eyes were just as devoid of reason and recognition, but it seemed to her that the fear there was less.

"No women were on that dreadful ship you're remembering, were there? My poor Cazaril. Shh, shh..."

It seemed to help for a while; at least, he's submitted to the cold touches of her rag meekly, and stopped begging in Roknari, much to her relief. She knew enough of his history; she could guess the shape of his nightmares by knowing the ones Bergon still had sometimes, shuddering and crying out in the safe circle of her arms. But she didn't want to think about Cazaril - her miracle worker, her pillar, her savior, her right hand, her _friend_ \- so vilely abused, so frightfully abandoned.

She fell asleep like that, slumped on the floor by the side of Cazaril's cot, and woke up to unbearable ache in her knees and Cazaril muttering frightfully again, twisting his head from side to side. His fever came back with vengeance; she went out to rouse dy Belinne, waiting faithfully outside her door, and send her for fresh water, and went back to her post.

This time just her voice did not do the trick of soothing Cazaril back to peace, and strain as she might, she could not understand the words he was whispering anymore. She busied herself with giving him water instead, squeezing drops gently between his cracked lips. He shied from her touch, mindlessly, and Iselle ached with anguish - it reminded her too much of this dreadful watch in her poor brother's bedroom, this slow descent from anger to plaintive fear to stillness.

"No," she said, out loud. "Lady, no. He served you so faithfully. No."

She held her breath, but no goddess came to console her, somehow to her relief and disappointment; and then, with a jolt, she remembered how Cazaril, recovering from the sword wound that should've killed him, asked for consolation in music.

"When you're better, you can have real musicians," she told him, "but for now..."

She's never had much taste for music, courtly or otherwise, never found it to be particularly tempting when there were so many other pursuits. And so the only melody that came to her was an old, simple lullaby - a lullaby that she, with a jolt, recognized as the one that her mother sang to her and Teidez when they were really, really small, before their entire world went upside down.

_I see the moon, the moon sees me_  
_shining through the leaves of the old oak tree_  
_Oh, let the light that shines on me_  
_shine on the one I love..._

The old song murmured and looped on itself - the moon, the lark, the mountains, the sea, the moon, the lark - and Iselle spun it out like fine golden thread, over and over until her throat ached, and under her hands - her voice - and maybe, if the Five were just, the Lady's touch - at the darkest hour of the night Cazaril floated from delirious unconsciousness into true sleep.

Iselle, dumb with exhaustion, considered going out and letting her ladies put her to sleep herself, and then spotted a hammock hanging across from Cazaril's cot; she climbed into it, armed with determination and beginner's luck rather than agility, and went out like a light.

* * *

Some indeterminate time later, she woke up to sunlight through the cabin's windows to rasping, painfully weak and _utterly_ scandalized "Royina!" in familiar and dearly welcome voice. She surged up, excited, and ended up crashing to the floor.

On the cot, Caz made a heroic attempt not to laugh at her, and immediately moaned in pain when the movement aggravated his injuries. She scuttled across the floor to him, dignity be damned, hissing a bit when all the aches and bruises of the previous day made themselves known in a concerted aria of pain, and was delighted to find his skin feverish, but not burning dangerously hot.

"Caz!"

"_Iselle_," Cazaril spluttered. "What are you _doing_?"

Bringing up the content of his nightmares, she decided, would only humiliate him; he himself taught her the thin line between lying, diplomacy and mercy. "I've decided you keep too many state secrets to leave you for the care of strangers when you were - not himself."

He squinted at her, dubious, and visibly decided to drop that line of inquiry. "Are we..."

"On the ship, yes, and getting home. Water, Caz?"

"You shouldn't serve on me," he protested, as if she wasn't raised by Grandmama, and as if he had any say in the matter.

"Nonsense," Iselle said, and limped for the water pitcher. "What do you remember?"

"I remember you _drowning_ because you wouldn't let go. Iselle, how could you?"

There was, apparently, no getting out of this conversation. She poured the water and went back, perched on the edge of his bed, and helped him take the first sip.

"Caz," she said. "Chancellor. Lupe dy Cazaril. Why were you in the water, wounded, unable to swim? At the rate you collect life debts from my house, my grandchildren's children will still be paying them off."

He stirred in painful protest. "It's not - my lady - I swore to serve you..."

"Shh," she said. "You chose to serve me above all that could be required and beyond death itself - three deaths, and you seem hell-bent on finding your fourth, Caz - and if I did not fight for you in return, how could I be ever worthy of your service, Cazaril?"

He swallowed; she could practically _see_ him trying to marshal arguments - for why she should've let him drown, for Lady's sake! - and went for the heavy weapons.

"And besides, would you had me returning to Betriz without you? She's my oldest friend, and I would not dare to disappoint her so, not even to appease your desire for martyrdom, Cazaril."

He conceded the match to her with a wry twist of his lips. She always valued his ability to recognize an opponent's strength, although with Caz it generally meant he would retreat, regroup, and return in devastating force. She's had a tastier morsel to tempt him with, though.

"_Do_ you remember what happened?"

"No," he said, slowly. "I remember you trying to get my cloak off - I remember pleading with you - I thought we were going to die, and the ship would follow. Why didn't we? This storm was sorcerer's work if I've ever seen it."

She leaned down to him, feeling absurdly moved to secrecy even in the shared privacy of their cabin, and told him, trying to pin down in words elusive, dreamlike memory of the God's message.

Cazaril hung on her every word; she saw, for a moment, a weird, vulnerable hunger in his eyes, a craving for something he's been denied - he still wrote poetry, she knew, still spent long evening with the most talented court musicians, trying to chase down this one, elusive, perfect melody that would describe the Lady's presence exactly - and regretted hurting him so.

"I don't think," she said awkwardly, "I don't think He was - within me, through me, not like it was with you or Mother. I truly think it was just - a message. A kindness? Are they kind, Caz? I don't think I would like to feel this again, grateful as I was for the assurance."

"I think," he replied slowly, "that your lady mother is extremely valued by her patron. And that somewhere in the Roknari princedoms there's one sorcerer fewer than there's been. _And_, assuming they didn't act on their own, we might have an invitation to another war - or, perhaps, another peace treaty we can enforce?"

"I'm looking forward to it," Iselle said, and they smiled at each other in certain savage understanding.

"You do," Cazaril said, "have to wonder at the timing of Dowager Royina catching her demon just as we needed it most. Was she guided there in time on your behalf? Or were the timing of our travel nudged here and there so she would be in time?"

"I think," Iselle said, "that you will have plenty of time to talk theology with Learned Umegat while you're quietly convalescing in Zangre, and that I would rather just add some gratitude to my daily prayers."

Predictably, he shifted again, went another two of three shades paler, and began to cough. Iselle put a careful hand on his chest, preventing him from further movement.

"Convalescing quietly? But to work we'll have to do - the inquiries - the war - my informants - Iselle! Surely I can read my reports from bed?"

Iselle laughed at him, the last vestiges of the nightmarish night dissolving from her mind. She leaned down and carefully, gently kissed his forehead. "I will deal with it, dearest Cazaril, while you will be recovering to the best of your abilities - under the threat of my royal displeasure!"

She was on her feet and halfway through the cabin while Cazaril was still recovering his wits - a rare occurrence she fully intended to remember and treasure in future - and before he could respond, she turned to him from the door to finish.

"I had, after all, the best of teachers."


End file.
